


The Sun If by Night, the Moon If by Day

by Lirazel



Category: Ladyhawke (1985)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:01:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Etienne of Navarre: these are his years without nights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun If by Night, the Moon If by Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lukoni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lukoni/gifts).



He never spent much time thinking about it before, and yet he finds that he misses the night. He yearns for a sight of the moon. Sometimes it rides high in an afternoon sky, pale as a pearl floating in the autumn blue, but always overshadowed by the sun, and it is never enough ( _her skin shone alabaster and glowed like moonlight_ ). He thinks of stars, fragile and twinkling and cold, impossibly far away ( _he once traced onto the bare expanse of her back the words of a poem comparing her eyes to the stars_ ). Even in the midst of the most intense storm, the day is never as dark as night, and he longs for the flickering light of a candle pushing back the darkness ( _her hair gleamed gold and fire like the candelight_ ).

 _(He had never been one for romance and beauty before Isabeau. Loving her has made him into a great many things he had never thought he would be.)_

\--

He had not believed in magic. He believed in miracles, the power of God to heal or bless or curse, but those were in accordance with nature and with creation. The dark powers and all they could accomplish had seemed no more real to him than his nurse’s bedtime stories, and for a time after he watched Isabeau transform right in front of him for the first time--her scream becoming the screech of the hawk and echoing in his ears whenever the wind picked up--he thought he had gone mad or was lost inside a dream. But a dream could never hurt this much, and madness would be a relief when compared to reality.

 _(He knows those stories for the lies they were: in stories, there’s always a way to break the curse.)_

\--

A hawk, he decides, suits her. There are her eyes, of course, her spirit and fierceness, and her bones had been delicate and fragile and fine under the tightness of her skin--if he could have believed that anyone would be able to lift up on the wind in flight, it would be her. He remembers laying a hand against her breast, feeling the heart beating there, faster and lighter than his own, and sometimes when he cradles the hawk against him, he is certain that its heart feels the same way.

 _(He does not feel worthy of the wolf, but its brutality suits his blackest moods.)_

\--

Some things even the shattering of his future cannot change, and so he makes himself a protector of sorts. He rides far enough away from Aquila that even the Bishop will not receive word of him, and he wanders from village to village offering his aide where he can. He drives out brigands and thieves, and the people thank him with a fine meal and a bed for the night. The weight of the sword in his hand as he swings it against evil is the only thing that feels right.

 _(He would once have thought this quite a satisfying life--Goliath beneath him, the sword of his father’s at his side, a hawk on his arm--but now it seems pale and dingy compared to what might have been.)_

\--

Even the wolf mourns. When he comes back to himself, back to skin and reason, the relentless knowledge of all he has lost and how he came to this place, all that remains is fleeting impressions: the wolf’s animal hunger, its bloodlust and cramped dark mind, the warmth of fur and the cold rush of night air as he bounds across the land faster than a horse. But while the wolf might not be able to contain any human knowledge, he knows that he loves the lady he guards with a simple, undying loyalty that is as pure as it is constant. And when Etienne is restored, he remembers throwing his head back, howling at a moon he will never again see through human eyes, pouring out the sorrow he carries in a sound that makes all who it hear cower in fear.

 _(This alone the Bishop has left him: the wolf’s voice is the perfect one in which to mourn.)_

\--

And then the moon breaches the horizon, and he knows hell for an eternal moment.

 _(Always together, eternally apart. Sometimes his fingertips almost brush against hers, and he wishes for death.)_

\--

The sword he carries is the heaviest burden he bears ( _except, always, for his sorrow_ ). Its weight at his side is a reminder of his ancestors, their great destinies and accomplishments. His father raised him with tales of courage and glory, of the Crusades and the struggle to free the Holy City from the hands of the infidels for God and for Rome. This was honor, this was worthiness, and Etienne had believed that by guarding Aquila, he might follow in his father’s footsteps, and be an honorable man. Instead, his life has become subsumed in the quest to protect a simple hawk and slay a man who wears the sacred garb of the Church.

The gaping hole that waits for his own contribution to the sword--the jewel he will someday find and place at the hilt--taunts him. But he has sworn on the sword itself that he will one day place the jewel from the Bishop’s ring there.

 _(Perhaps when he does, he will no longer dream of his father’s disappointed eyes.)_

\--

His family has always been among the most faithful and pious, and he had lit candles at the altar as a boy. Then he believed that all men who served the Church were consecrated by God and as infallible as the Pope himself. But if the Bishop and Imperius have taught him anything, it is that men are weak and power can crush humility.

 _(Most of the time, he still clings to his trust that the Lord has a plan for all of this pain and misery, but there are days when the endless sunlight saps him of his faith, and he crumbles in doubt.)_

\--

Sometimes bitterness chokes him, acidic and white-hot in his throat, and he wishes he could claw and slash and rend like the wolf. He imagines the Bishop’s blood exploding hot inside his wolf’s mouth, shredding flesh and crunching bones, hearing the man’s hopeless pleading and knowing true satisfaction. Those are the days when the hawk flies away and doesn’t return until nightfall, as though the heat of his thirst for vengeance is too much even for her.

 _(In his nightmares, he tears Isabeau to bits instead and he wakes to the merciless sunlight, heart thundering and her hawk-woman screams echoing in his ears.)_

\--

He drowned his sorrow in wine precisely once, a few days after the curse came upon him, when he was finally recovered enough to drag himself into an inn and call for a drink. It did not make him forget, precisely, but it softened some edges, making everything hazy and dull until he collapsed as the sun went down and lost himself in the wildness of the wolf. The next morning, when the transformation was complete, his head pounded so much that he couldn’t concentrate even on his keening heart. But the hawk’s fierce gaze seemed to him to be disapproving--even if he knew such a thing was impossible--and he thought of the honor of Navarre and knew the shame was too intense for him to seek oblivion there again.

 _(Sometimes he swears he can see Isabeau staring at him out of the hawk’s eyes.)_

\--

There is no other woman.

 _(There could never be another woman--wolves and hawks mate for life.)_

\--

The landscape around him seems to have a cruel edge to its beauty--or perhaps it is simply his pain that lends it such. Isabeau would have loved the harshness of the mountains and he knows that she grew up running free and barefoot and laughing through the forest of Anjou. He has learned every slant of sunlight, every hue of the sunrise and sunset, and there are times when natural beauty seems almost a balm for his soul.

 _(He would trade it all in an instant and live in the foulest of hovels if he knew Isabeau would be there, too.)_

\--

He tries not to let himself think of her at all, though of course that is impossible. Still, there are times when he manages to go days at a time without imagining what the nights are like for her. Is she ever cold? Does he leave her enough to eat? How does she spend her time and what does she let her thoughts dwell on? It seems as though he knows her so well that he should know the answers to all of these questions, but he had first fallen in love with her because of the way she had of surprising him.

 _(He thinks of leaving her messages, of begging for scraps of paper and a quill, but he decides that this would be another form of torture, and he has had enough of that to last a hundred lifetimes.)_

\--

On the days when the sun seems harshest, he considers it. Considers breaking the hawk’s neck with one quick twist of his hands, considers falling on his own sword. But then he remembers Aquila’s mocking eyes, his jeering laughter as Isabeau transformed right in front of him and Etienne himself fell to his knees in despair. Perhaps he will make that choice one day, for both himself and Isabeau, and put an end to this half-life they’re cursed to stumble through. But only after he tastes revenge. Only then.

 _(He once saw the whole world opened before him, possibilities stretching to the horizon, but now he can’t imagine what there would be to live for once his quest is completed.)_

\--

He tries not to remember.

 _(He fails.)_

\--

He tries not to hope.

 _(But he can’t stop.)_

\--

 _(And hope is, perhaps, the greatest torture of all.)_


End file.
